


In All Chaos There is Calculation

by scorpysue



Series: The Feeling of Truth [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel (Movies), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Empathy, Gen, Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youth, combining elements from several X-Men universes to form this particular one, empath (not the mutant), empathic character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpysue/pseuds/scorpysue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier seeks a new addition to his staff at the Institute and finds it in Dr. Joan Bates, an empathic mutant living out her life as a therapist in New York City.  Over the course of her first week at the school, Joan meets and learns to live with her coworkers, and together, they discover something sinister is lurking in the shadows.</p><p>Introducing two new mutants: Dr. Joan Bates and Jason Richfield, a young mutant with a devastating ability.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In All Chaos There is Calculation

Dr. Joan Bates pressed the red button on her desk phone and waited for the soft beep to let her know the intercom was on.

“Heather, send in my three o’clock,” she said in her clean London accent, and released the button, waiting for her receptionist’s reply.  It was two-forty-five in the afternoon; the corner office’s two southern floor-to-ceiling windows let long, wide rays of sunlight lay across the room, brightening the dark wood furniture and floor.  The customary physician’s couch sat in front of a worn, deep red armchair flecked with gold thread, an antique Joan had flown over from her parents’ estate after her mother’s death.  Behind that was her desk, a cherry roll-top with a built in lamp and several alcoves for her files and phone, all neatly arranged for easy access.  Joan relished the time between appointments if only to be in this beautiful room alone, enjoying the silence in splendor.

The office door opened without warning, and Joan rose from behind her desk to see a thin, bald man wearing a suit sitting in a motorized wheelchair enter, hovering just slightly above the ground.  The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, but she contained herself and moved around the desk to greet him.

“Professor,” she said curtly, extending a hand, “I didn’t think you were the type for therapy.”

“Doctor,” he said, shaking her hand and smiling softly.  He gestured to the space between the armchair and the couch.  “May I?”

“Of course,” Joan said, and she took a seat in the chair, hands empty of any writing materials.  “What brings you to my office?”  Her voice was monotone, her face void of expression.  She pushed a long strand of reddish brown hair behind her ear and adjusted her black-rimmed, rectangular frame glasses, staring directly at her visitor with dark hazel eyes.

“A request, if I may be so bold,” he said, reaching in his breast pocket and pulling out a small, thin brown book.  He held it out for her and she took it, reading the gold embossed text on the front cover.  Xavier Institute for Higher Learning.  Still expressionless, Joan stared at him.  
  
“What kind of request?”  
  
The man smiled and pressed his fingertips together in front of him.  “To join my school, as a member of staff.  Your talents are, as far as I have been able to discover, unique and vital to improving the lives of my students.  I’ve reviewed your employment history.  Civilian psychologists don’t often go on tour with soldiers, do they?”  Joan remained silent, crossing her legs and slouching slightly in her chair, small, innocuous behaviors she forced herself to perform to distract from the alien feeling of another person’s emotions creeping through the air into her mind.  
  
“No, they don’t,” she replied, stone-faced.  “But it isn’t particularly out of the ordinary.  Why would my expertise with military psychology be of vital use to your students, Professor?  Do they suffer from post traumatic stress?  Have you been training them for combat?”  She shifted to the left, leaning her elbow on the arm of the chair.  It creaked slightly under the weight.  
  
The Professor laughed, sighing before he said, “Come now, Doctor Bates, let us not play games.  I know what you are, and you know what I am.  You knew even before I shook your hand the truth of my biology, and I came here with the knowledge of yours.”  
  
“My biology aside, you still haven’t answered my question.”  The sky began to darken, a sudden change in the weather not entirely uncommon on the Atlantic coast.  
The Professor smiled, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair.  “I am looking for teachers, guides for the youth who come to my school.  Who better to help them control their powers than adults who have been living so long undetected among humans?  Who better than you, Doctor Bates, a master of her abilities?”  Little drops of rain began to splatter lightly on the windows.  The office’s once bright and shining wood surfaces took on a foreboding look, deep shadows forming in the corners of the room.  
  
Joan merely stared back at him, unmoving.  “What are you offering me in return for my services?”  
  
“Room, board, a safe place, and community,” he said.  “All of my resources are at your disposal, should you choose to join me.”  He shifted slightly to pull a thick envelope from beside him and held it out to Joan.  She took it, pinching the metal clasp together to open it.  Inside was a handful of teaching certificates, signed and dated by Professor Xavier, a checkbook presumably attached to the Institute’s checking account, and a key with a numbered tag attached to it.  
  
“A little presumptuous to have brought all this along, don’t you think, Professor?” Joan said, setting the packet on an end table next to her chair.  “What makes you think I’ll say yes?”  
  
“Why, because you want to, Doctor,” he said, still smiling.  
  
“You know he’s already visited me,” Joan said, blinking slowly.  The rain picked up outside, small water droplets growing to large, fat ones that thumped violently on the windows.  Xavier’s expression remained unchanged, but Joan could sense his mood darkening.  
  
“Yes, I had expected as much.  What did he offer you?”  
  
“Power, revenge, the usual megalomaniacal monologue,” she said, waving a hand dismissively.  “But I refused.  His agenda’s grown far too violent for my tastes.  He should have assumed as much when I left his dwindling band of misfits last year for the same reasons.”  Joan eyed Xavier sharply, masking her anticipation in a strong cloak of apathy as she waited for his reaction.  It was as she predicted: he frowned, brow furrowed, showing his age, steepling his fingers across his chest.  When he didn’t respond, she continued.  “I understand the true nature of what we as a people are up against, better than almost anyone.  I have felt it in my very being what we face, the animosity, the fear.  Fighting fire with fire looks attractive when you’ve got hundreds of soldiers’ greatest fears and torments living inside of you.”  She raised her eyebrows slightly in unison, allowing a moment of annoyance to cross her face.  The rain thundered outside, nearly sideways, causing chaotic shadows on the dark wood floor.  Xavier rubbed his temple with his right hand, looking at the ground instead of at Joan.  They sat in silence for a moment, Joan breathing slowly and evenly, containing the roiling sea of emotion within her skin, Xavier seemingly lost in thought.  
  
Finally, he raised his head to look at her, frown still resolutely intact.  
  
“And now?” he said, eyes locked with hers.  She blinked, uncaring.  
  
“Now, I know what kind of fire Magneto is willing to use, and I want no part of it,” she said calmly, settling in more comfortably to her chair.  “But I have patients here who need me.”  She waved a hand dismissively.  “You can’t expect me to uproot my life, again, to help your students when I am already helping where I am.  What makes your children so much more deserving than the people I see on a weekly basis?”  
  
Xavier’s frown softened, and, resting his hands in his lap, he turned his chair toward the door.  “Jason, would you please come in?”  The door opened and in stepped a teenage boy, no older than fifteen.  He had short-cropped black hair, wore a simple t-shirt and jeans, and held his hands clasped behind him as he walked forward, stopping in front of Joan and staring out the window behind her.  Immediately, Joan knew what had been done to him: not a single ripple of emotion emanated from him.  He merely was, like the table next to her or the chair she sat on.  
  
“Jason’s mutation is tied directly into his emotions, much like yours.  When he feels something very strongly, be it rage or sorrow or even extreme happiness, Jason’s ability becomes uncontrollable.  He is destructive, to the detriment of--”  Joan held up a hand to stop Xavier and gestured to Jason to come to her.  He stepped forward, and she took his hand, holding it in hers, and closed her eyes.  
  
At first, there was nothing, she saw only blackness, sensed no feeling, but then, very suddenly, she slammed into a wall.  Behind it, she could feel the boy,  
overwhelmingly, his disappointment in himself, self-loathing, depression, coupled with frustration and anger that he was unable to control his emotions and thus his powers.  She saw flashes of memory, one standing out in which he, standing amidst a party of other teenagers, grew furious with the actions of another boy.  The target of his ire exploded, viscera and bone splattering the room, and, as the panicked crowd pushed past him, others exploded, caught in Jason’s undirected fury.  
Joan pulled back, away from the wall and out of his mind, and let go of his hand, eyeing Xavier coldly.  
  
“I understand why you did this,” she gestured to Jason, “but I cannot agree with your method here.”  Jason looked down at her, expressionless, hands hanging limply at his sides.  Xavier leaned forward in his chair, meeting Joan’s gaze with intensity.  
  
“Then join me,” he said, and Joan felt the urgency in his voice as if it belonged to her.  “This was the only solution available to me, but for you, the possibilities are endless.  We need you, Joan.  Jason needs you.”  The urgency faded from her as Xavier sat back in his seat, and she knew he was right.  There was no one else, as far as she knew, who could help the boy the way she could.  
  
Sighing, Joan sat back in her seat and looked at the packet on the table next to her.  Outside, the rain hammered away and the sky flashed, sending a roll of thunder over the scene.  She touched the key, an old, bronze thing probably made in the early 1900s; the tag tied to it had the number 23 on it in thin, neat handwriting.  
“When do I begin?” she said, looking back to Xavier.  He relaxed and, smiling, removed a train ticket from his breast pocket.  Jason looked between the two of them, and Joan thought she felt a twinge of relief flow from him into her.

_____________________________________________________________________________

The school was as she imagined: a sprawling brick estate, complete with wrought iron fence and rose garden, the most welcoming preparatory school she had ever seen.  The sun seemed to shine a little brighter over the school than it had on the drive in, and Joan wondered if that didn’t have to do with one of the students inside.  Beneath her feet, the gravel walkway crackled, and as she approached the gate, it swung open, unaided.  Rolling her eyes, Joan continued up the front steps into the foyer.  The floor was a similar dark wood to that in her old office, as were the walls; Joan couldn’t help feeling a little at home, even if this place could fit one hundred or more of her offices inside it.  
  
Even though the place looked deserted, Joan could feel the presence of quite a few students, mostly focused in groups in rooms down the left hallway.  She pulled her key out of her jeans pocket, assumed 23 must be on the second floor, and headed up one of the elaborate dark wood staircases to deposit her luggage.  She found her room easily and unlocked it, smelling lavender and vanilla as she opened the door.  A small card was folded upright on the bedside table with the word Welcome! handwritten on the front.  Across from the bed, there was a large window with its curtains drawn to reveal the backyard, a decadent lawn dotted with large and small fountains and benches.  A small group of students sat on the grass under a massive oak, listening attentively to a large, blue man with tufts of fur poking out from under his clothes.  He wore glasses and an ill-fitting suit, and Joan noticed he was not wearing any shoes, although she doubted he could with his feet.  They were oversized and his toes ended in thick black claws instead of nails.  From the window, Joan’s senses of the group below were faint, but she was able to tell the man was in his element and was pleased to be teaching, regardless of his appearance, although she could sense a minute amount of self-consciousness she supposed was fostered long before he arrived at the school.  
  
After setting her bags down and assessing the adjoining bathroom for its facilities, Joan set out down the hallway and back down the stairs to find Xavier.  In one of the classrooms she passed, she felt Jason; he stood out starkly against his classmates, the only blank form in a mass of writhing emotion.  She let a frown cross her face, one of the few emotional responses she had allowed herself in the past week.  Jason was only one of the many students she was scheduled to see, but she couldn’t help but feel particularly attached to him.  Joan knew from personal experience what walling off one’s emotions did to a person, and she hated to see another child go through what she had.  
  
At the end of the hallway, a door sat slightly ajar, and Joan could feel Xavier within the room behind it, waiting for her.  She pushed the door open and stepped inside, closing it behind her.  
  
“Ah, Doctor Bates, I trust you found your room all right?”  He looked down at her empty hands and she nodded, taking a seat in one of the large armchairs in front of him, not unlike those in her old office.  Internally, she felt a twinge of annoyance that her decorating tastes were shared by Xavier, but she dismissed it, shutting her feelings down to prevent them getting out of hand.  
  
“Yes, I did.  Do you have my schedule?”  Xavier smiled, then reached into his desk and pulled out a pile of folders, all packed to bursting with what Joan assumed were student files.  
  
“These are your charges, Doctor.  Get to know them on paper first, then prioritize your schedule yourself.  I want you to be comfortable in the knowledge that you have the freedom to define your job here, not I.”  
  
“And my office?” she said, raising an eyebrow at the stack but putting no feeling behind it.  
  
“Ah, yes,” he said, then produced another key from the middle drawer of his desk.  He set it atop the pile.  “Not far from my own, actually.  Just two doors down on the right once you leave here.  Do you have any other questions?”  He leaned back in his chair, still maintaining his knowing smile.  Joan stared at him for a moment, then sighed.  
  
“What exactly are you expecting me to do for these children?  Fix them all?  Make them all perfect little functioning members of society?  I understand Jason’s case, but the rest of them cannot possibly be as bad.”  
  
“Read their files, Joan, that is what I expect you to do today,” he said, tapping the pile.  “What comes next is up to you.  Learn what you can of them from their files and apply that to your sessions with them.  If you don’t think a child needs your help, then you don’t have to schedule them after your initial meeting.  But I do expect you to meet with all of them, regardless of the severity their file expresses.”  He turned his chair, moving himself out from behind his desk to stop next to her.  She noticed his chair was no longer the motorized one he had arrived in at their first meeting.  This chair was floating several inches above the ground and had no wheels or mechanical parts she could see.  
  
“I thought your only ability was telepathy,” she said, studying the chair.  
  
“I am capable of a few others, telekinesis among them, but I am hardly as accomplished at it as some of my students are,” he said, smiling.  
  
The door opened behind them without warning, and Joan rose from her chair, turning to face the newcomer.  A short man, only a little taller than Joan, with thick black hair twisted into two greasy pompadours on either side of his head chewing on an unlit cigar stood in the doorway, an overstuffed duffel bag slung over one shoulder.  Xavier smiled even wider and floated toward the man, offering his hand.  
  
“Logan!  You decided to join us after all,” he said.  The man shook Xavier’s hand, then raised an eyebrow at Joan.  Where Xavier’s emotions were neatly contained in the air around him, this man allowed his discomfort and cynicism to ooze all over the room.  Joan did not step forward to shake his hand, uninterested in consuming any of his more concentrated emotions.  
  
“Hm,” said Logan, taking the cigar out of his mouth.  “Who’s she?”  He pointed to Joan with the fist that clutched the cigar.  
  
“Doctor Joan Bates,” she answered, crossing her arms over her chest.  “Newly appointed resident psychologist of the Institute.”  She felt some of his confusion dissipate, replaced with a thin layer of hostility.  
  
“You’re not gonna try to shrink my head, eh, Doc?” he said, eyebrow still raised.  Joan waved a hand dismissively.  
  
“Not unless you want me to, although by the feel of things, you could benefit from a session or two,” she said, feeling his hostility begin to boil at that.  
  
“Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me that’s not wrong with everyone else,” he growled, then looked to Xavier.  “Somewhere I can put my bag?”  Xavier nodded and gestured to the hallway.  The man named Logan stepped out into the hallway, and Xavier led him down it and out of Joan’s view.  Quickly, she gathered the pile of folders and the key and headed down the hallway to her new office.  On the door was a gold placard with Dr. Bates, Ph.D. engraved in it.  The office wasn’t locked, and she went inside to find a spacious dark wood room with tall wooden file cabinets set on either side of a large desk not unlike the one in Xavier’s office.  The curtains were drawn across the window, and Joan opened them to reveal a view of the front lawn.  Joan used her sleeve to wipe the thick layer of dust off the desk and set the files down in the middle of it.  A knock at the door startled her, and she bumped the pile, sending the top six files across the desk and onto the floor, contents spilling everywhere.  As she bent to pick them up, the door opened, and she could hear the sound of many footsteps outside in the hall.  
  
“Hello?” said a young girl’s voice from the doorway.  “I heard someone come in here when I was in class, are you new?”  Joan stood up from behind the desk and brushed herself off of dust.  
  
“Yes,” she said, “I am.”  The girl in front of her was skinny, wearing a black, spaghetti-string tank top and too-tight-for-school jeans.  She had a bright red pixie cut and wide green eyes and stood with her shoulders hunched and hands clasped around the straps of her backpack.  
  
“Oh, cool, I’m Jean,” she said, holding her hand out.  Joan took it and felt the young girl’s enthusiasm ten-fold from what was floating in the air around her.  She was eager, excited, curious, but there was a clot of self-doubt amidst it all, what at first glance appeared to be typical teenage self-consciousness but Joan could tell went deeper than the occasional zit or poor test score.

“Doctor Bates,” said Joan, trying on her first smile in months.  It must have looked strange, as Jean released Joan’s hand first and brought it back to her backpack strap, looking at the ground.  “What is it?” Joan asked, tilting her head down to look into Jean’s eyes.  
  
Jean looked up at her, then away out the window.  “I can’t...I can’t read your mind.  It’s weird.”  
  
“Why is that weird?”  Joan could have laughed but she held it in.  Was Xavier unable to read her mind as well?  Or was this girl just not as powerful?  
  
“Because I can read everyone’s minds,” she said, now staring directly at Joan.  “What’s your power?”  Jean shifted back and forth on her feet.  Behind her, other students were appearing at the door, pushing it further open and queueing outside.  
  
“Who’s that?”

“Must be a new teacher.”

“Is that the lady who’s gonna help Jason?”

Joan sighed, then gestured to the students waiting outside.  “Come in, come in, you’ll all meet me sooner or later, now is as good a time as any.”  They filed into the office, quickly filling the small space, stepping around the papers on the floor.  Jean helpfully picked them up telekinetically, setting them in their own separate, much neater pile on the desk.

Each and every student had their own emotional profile that Joan could sense, and she took a moment to give them individual mental attention, committing them to memory.  They all stared at her with a collective curiosity that she pushed aside to project a calm happiness around herself.

“I am Doctor Joan Bates, the new resident psychologist for the Institution.”  She’d only said it twice today, but it was beginning to sound rehearsed.  “My job is to meet with each of you to define your individual needs as students of this school and help you, if you want or need me to.”  A couple of the students exchanged raised eyebrows and one even dramatically rolled his eyes.

“I don’t need therapy, do you?” a blond boy with bright blue eyes asked a diminutive girl with a white streak in her dark brown hair.  She didn’t answer, just continued to stare at Joan, listening.

Joan merely smiled at them and raised her hands in mock surrender.

“As I said, it’s not mandatory, but I’m here if you need me.  I will, at Professor Xavier’s behest, be meeting with all you individually, just to assess your needs.  And since you’re here, you can give me your class schedules so I know when to make your appointments.”  She winked, grinning, and most of the kids got what she meant and pulled their syllabi out of their backpacks, laying them on her desk.  Jean arranged them alphabetically, shuffling the papers in midair and laying them back down in a neat stack.

“Teacher’s pet,” said one of the boys behind her and another one jostled him playfully.

“That’s enough,” said a woman’s voice behind everyone, and they all turned, parting to reveal a tall, athletic black woman with long, wiry snow white hair.  “Let’s leave the Doctor to her work.”  The students swarmed past her and out into the hall, bursting into conversation as soon as they were out of the office.  The woman, wearing a smart navy blue blazer and trouser suit, greeted Joan much the same as everyone else had: with a handshake.  Joan was beginning to enjoy being offered the innermost emotions of everyone she met without protest, and she took the well-manicured hand and shook.  “Welcome to the Institute, Doctor Bates.  I am Ororo Munroe, or Storm, as the children like to call me.”  Joan felt Ororo’s preoccupation shoot through her arm and into the stockpile of emotional profiles she was building.  “We’re glad to have you.”

 _Could have fooled me_ , thought Joan as she released the other woman’s hand and withdrew her emotional projection from the air around her.  “Has the Professor enlightened you as to my power?” she asked, stepping back around the desk to begin sorting the files.

“Yes, he has, and I am excited to see what you will do with it.  My own abilities pertain to the weather,” she said, raising a hand to the sky, eyes still on Joan’s.

“I noticed something about the sun on my walk up.  I assume the plants never have to worry about water?”

Ororo’s eyes crinkled as she laughed softly.  “No, they do not.”  Her accent was thick, and Joan was reminded of a family trip to Egypt as a child.  Almost as quickly as her smile appeared, it faded, and Ororo folded her arms in front of her.  “He did also inform us of your past employment.  With Magneto.”

Joan held back her exasperation, focusing instead on sorting the folders alphabetically, as Jean had sorted the class schedules, while she answered.

“I believe that is what most people call a ‘phase’,” she said, tapping stacks of paper against the desk to straighten them.  “I have no loyalties toward Magneto or his people, you can be assured.”

“Your past is of no consequence to me,” said Ororo.  “But some of the others, including the students, might not be so forgiving.  Brace yourself for persecution, and know that you are not alone in having shared those ideals.”  Joan looked up from her papers to meet the woman’s shocking blue eyes and offered a sincere smile.  True gratitude radiated from her through the room.  Ororo seemed to sway as she felt the wave and offered a smile of her own.  “Extraordinary,” she said as she turned and walked off into the hallway.  Joan pulled the gratitude back inside of her, returning to her state of emotional dormancy, musing on what a difficult woman Ororo was to read, even with her extensive empathic abilities.  She continued sorting files, placing them into the file cabinets, finally settling down in the cushioned swivel chair to begin her assignment.  As the sun twinkled brightly outside, Joan flipped open Jason’s file and began to read.

______________________________________________________________________________ 

  
The conference room was dark, unhelped by the clouds in the afternoon sky.  As the group entered, Xavier flipped the light switch and a gold, electric chandelier lit up in the center of the ceiling.  The others filed in behind him and took seats at the large conference table under the chandelier, Xavier continuing past them to the room’s far end and taking a space at the head of the oval table.  Joan seated herself nearest the door, next to the other new arrival, Logan.  Across from her sat the man she had seen teaching outside the day before, now wearing a properly tailored black suit to fit his abnormally blue and hairy body, and next to him sat Ororo, dressed today in a knee-length, black floral dress.  Joan wore her usual business casual blouse and trousers and sat low in her chair, the picture of apathy.  On either side of Xavier sat two people Joan hadn’t met but had sensed in the school the day before.  One was a massive, tanned man, broad shouldered, square jawed, and serious.  The other was a thin, white, blond woman wearing a white pants suit, and she was staring at Joan.  Joan stared back, unfeeling, and looked her over, then looked to Xavier as he sat forward and began to speak.

“I have brought you all here, firstly, to introduce our two new members of staff,” he said, smiling and gesturing to Joan and Logan.  Logan raised an eyebrow, clearly uninformed of his employment status.  “Doctor Joan Bates, our new resident psychologist and counselor for the students, and Logan, our new physical education teacher.”  Joan didn’t need her empathic ability to tell that Logan was absolutely confused by this announcement.

“Wait a second there, bub, no one said anything about me bein’ a teacher,” he said, leaning over the table toward Xavier.  The blond woman did nothing to hide her amusement, but the others were more discreet.

“Logan, if you expect to reside at this school, you must give something to it.  Or did you forget that condition of my generosity?” said Xavier, raising his eyebrows.  Logan sat back in his chair, slumping a little and grumbling to himself.  “Now, allow me to introduce to you the four other members of staff we have at the Institute.  I believe you, Joan, are already acquainted with our mathematics teacher, Ms. Ororo Munroe?”  Joan nodded and offered a small smile to Ororo, who returned it warmly.  Xavier continued, gesturing to the blue man seated next to her, who grinned and waved genially.  “This is Doctor Henry McCoy, our science teacher,” he moved on to the mountain of a man on Ororo’s other side, “Piotr Rasputin, history teacher,” the man nodded silently, “and finally, Ms. Emma Frost, our teacher of the arts.”  The blond woman waggled her fingers at Joan, still smirking.

Xavier smiled around at everyone while Joan felt a gentle prodding in the back of her mind.  Mentally, she waved it away; Ms. Frost looked suddenly annoyed, and Joan couldn’t help but be pleased with herself.

 _It’s not easy to navigate in there, Doctor_ , said a sudden voice in her head, which she could only assume belonged to Emma.   _A girl could get hurt climbing over all those people._

 _Aren’t you supposed to be the art teacher?_ Joan thought, watching Xavier as he began to speak again.

 _Mind-reading is an art, Doctor, and my first lesson for you is to clean it up in there.  Didn’t Xavier tell you?  No secrets in his school._  In the middle of his sentence, Xavier stopped, frowning.

“Ms. Frost, I might remind you that everyone at this school is entitled to their privacy, our newcomers included.”  Without missing a beat, he continued with his previous statement.  “SENTINEL legislation is rising in popularity, and I don’t think I need to explain how serious that is to any of you.”  Emma sat back in her chair, smirk wiped from her face.  She presented a calm, cool demeanor on the outside, but Joan could feel embarrassment and fury seething through her.  Logan shot her a sideways glance, eyebrow raised, then leaned over to Joan, less wary of her than he had been the previous day.

“I can smell crazy on that one,” he whispered, breath smelling of cigars and stale beer.  “Better watch out or she might cut your hair in your sleep.”  Joan did her best to keep her face straight, but she briefly touched Logan’s arm, letting what would have externally been her laughter and gratitude into him.  He looked at his arm where she touched it, rubbing the spot cautiously with his hand, then looked at her, eyebrow arched even higher.  He opened his mouth to speak, but Xavier cleared his throat loudly before continuing.

“As I said, there are several key senators supporting this legislation.  Recently, plans for the SENTINEL design have been leaked.”  He turned his chair toward a projector screen on the wall and pressed a button on his chair.  The lights dimmed and a blueprint of a robotic suit appeared on the screen, stretched out like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.  “The SENTINELs, intended to be worn by trained police officers, are equipped with genetic trace technology, allowing them to perform a scan on any person within a certain range.  This scan seeks out the X-gene, which the SENTINEL then targets for registration.  The registration system has already passed the Senate and is expected to pass the House any day now.”  Xavier leaned forward, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair.  Silence fell over them, all pettiness extinguished.

Xavier pressed the button again and a new image appeared: a black and white photograph of a white man wearing a strange helmet that covered most of his head and face.  Piotr grunted, crossing his arms and Dr. McCoy’s mouth dipped into a deep frown, but no one else reacted, even though Joan could feel each of their moods darken considerably.  
  
“Magneto,” said Xavier, and everyone but Joan and Logan nodded.  Ororo glanced briefly at Joan, then back to the image.  “He and his followers are a detriment to our efforts.  Our only real weapon against legal and social oppression is education, and that education must start with our students.  Once the world can see that mutants are nothing to be afraid of and that being a mutant is nothing to be ashamed of, we will no longer have men like Trask in power to persecute us.”  He looked at each of them around the table, lingering longest on Logan.  “It is our job to protect these children and prepare them for this new age.  I don’t want any doubts about what we are aiming to do here.  We are not raising an army, but we are not sitting idly by while these injustices are perpetrated.  That is why I have scheduled a meeting with the House Majority and Minority leaders to visit the school and see that mutants are just like any other people.”  Dr. McCoy’s mouth dropped open a bit and the sky outside seemed to grow slightly darker.  Rain began to fall, soft, quiet droplets hitting the window.  The room fell into silence again as they parsed Xavier’s words.  
  
After a few moments, Joan straightened up in her chair.  
  
“When is the visit?” she said, folding her hands together on the table.  
  
“Next Friday,” he said.  
  
“And how long ago did you schedule it?”  Joan could feel confusion emanating from nearly everyone.  
  
“Nearly one month ago,” said Xavier.  Joan nodded, trying hard to keep her annoyance internal.  She brushed her hair behind her ears to distract herself.  
  
“What does it matter how long ago he scheduled it?” said Emma, a scowl marring her Hollywood-pretty face.  Joan did not return the expression.  
  
“Because it means he hired me last minute, giving me less than two weeks to ‘fix’,” Joan produced air quotes with her index and middle fingers, “his problem students.  Judging by their files and what I learned from proximity, these children have issues that extend past this deadline.  I will need more time if you want them to be perfect angels by the time Big Brother comes around.”  
  
“Are you saying you can’t do it?” Emma sneered, leaning an elbow on the table and resting her head in the palm of her hand.  “Is the job too much for you?”  


“Enough, Emma,” said Xavier, sighing.  Joan merely stared at him, ignoring the others.  “Yes, I agree, I failed to plan ahead for this event.  But that does not mean you cannot still help them.  Even if the visit goes poorly and one of the students acts out, they still need guidance.  I meant it when I said you would be an invaluable asset to us, Doctor.”  For a third time, the room became quiet as Joan allowed her emotions to dissipate behind her wall.  She inhaled and exhaled slowly through her nose, feeling the rise and fall of her shoulders as she maintained eye contact with Xavier.

“I am not going to quit, Professor,” she said, finally breaking the silence.  “I am merely examining the timeline of your reasoning.  I hope I can prove to be as invaluable an asset as you believe I am.”  She sat back in her chair, resting her hands on the ends of its arms, still staring at Xavier.  
  
“Are there any more questions?” he asked, pressing the button on his chair again.  The lights came on and the projector screen shut off, while outside the rain fell steadily.  
  
“What do we intend to do if the registration legislation passes?” said Ororo.  Piotr nodded in agreement, brooding face made even more sullen by his lowered brow.  
  
“I intend to carry on with our mission here,” said Xavier.  “If they require us to register, then we register, and we move on.”  
  
“And if the SENTINELs are approved?” said Dr. McCoy.  
  
“As long as we don’t project a threat, they shouldn’t bother us,” said Xavier.  
  
“And if they do?” growled Piotr through a thick, Russian accent.  “If the SENTINELs come for us?  If they begin to round us up or slaughter us?”  
  
“I don’t believe it will ever come to that, Piotr,” said Xavier, shaking his head.  “The humans seek to assuage their fears of us.  If they truly wanted to harm us, I believe they would have done it by now, without bothering with all this legislative pomp and circumstance.”  
  
The group looked around at each other, faces tight with concern, except for Emma, who scoffed, waving a hand dismissively.  
  
“We live in a school full of powerful mutants, and you’re all afraid that some men in metal suits will come to take us away to--to what?  Concentration camps?  This isn’t Nazi Germany, and we aren’t the Jews.  We have weapons.  We are weapons,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “You want a contingency plan?  Bad guys come, we stop them.  It’s as simple as that.”  Suddenly, her skin shifted, changing from pale flesh to sharp, translucent diamond.  The chair beneath her let out a loud creaking sound and she stood.  “Unless you think you’re not strong enough?”  She crossed her arms and rested her weight on one leg, her hip jutting out to one side.  Joan and Logan exchanged raised eyebrows.  
  
The tension was broken by Piotr bursting into loud, hearty laughter as his skin turned from its natural tanned flesh into a blue-tinged steel.  He stood up as well, and Joan noted that he was extremely tall, the top of his head nearly brushing the chandelier.  
  
“It is not a question of strength,” he said, arms still crossed.  The laughter left his eyes as he stared at Emma.  “It is a question of resolve.  How much abuse are we willing to take before we do something more than ‘educate’?”  
  
“If you came to this school to participate in an army, Mr. Rasputin,” said Xavier loudly, maneuvering his chair between the two gleaming mutants, “you made a rather large mistake.  Violence will not solve our problems.  Understanding and tolerance will.  Now, if there are no further questions, I believe this meeting is adjourned.”  Everyone else rose from their seats, allowing Xavier to pass from the room before the rest of them.  Piotr and Emma reverted back to their original forms; Emma stalked off down the hall alone while the others stood outside the door, now addressing Joan and Logan.  Dr. McCoy was the first to speak.  
  
“Let me just say it is an honor to meet you, Doctor,” he said to Joan, shaking her hand. “Professor Xavier has told us all about your abilities and credentials.  I’m also familiar with your work for the British military.”

“Do you always do such extensive research on your colleagues, Doctor?” she said, allowing a smirk to creep across her lips.  Dr. McCoy smiled apologetically; Joan mused that if he could have blushed, it might have turned half his body red.  
  
“Ah, not usually no, but the subject matter was so engrossing, I had to know more.  And please, call me Hank.”  Joan nodded, returning his smile sincerely.  
  
“Well, Hank, if you seek further knowledge, you may come to its very source.”  She looked up at Piotr who was now offering his hand to shake.  
  
“Welcome to the team, Doctor,” he said, his hand enveloping hers entirely.  “I hope you are really as good as the Professor says.  These kids need it.”  Very suddenly, he pulled her arm forward and leaned down, putting his face next to hers.  His mood shifted intensely, from casual to angry calm.  “But if you are thinking about causing problems for Xavier and his vision here, you should think again.”  He towered over her, menacing, and without thinking, Joan began feeding apathy through her arm into his.  Losing his edge, he released her violently, and she stumbled backwards into Logan, who growled, and watched him stride away down the hall.  
  
“Peter!” called Ororo, fists clenched.  She turned to Joan, sighing.  “I am so sorry.  His sister is one of the students here, and he’s very protective.  He also found out about . . . .” she looked at Logan, then back to Joan, questioning.  Joan nodded, letting Logan help steady her. “He found out that you worked for Magneto.  Naturally, he is distrustful.”  Hank blinked, straightening his glasses nervously on his face.  
  
“You worked for Magneto?” asked Logan.  
  
“Yes,” sighed Joan, “I _worked_ for Magneto.  Past tense.”  Logan shrugged, digging a cigar out of his pocket and putting it in his mouth to chew.  The tension in the air had not dissipated, and Joan was beginning to feel exhausted from all the emotional exchanges happening around her.  “I think, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time I retired.  It was a pleasure to meet you,” she nodded to Hank.  “Have a good evening.”  Quickly, she turned away from them, gathering her emotions within her as she went up the stairs to her room.

After a quiet hour feeling only the occasional student pass through her senses, there was a knock at the door.  
  
“Come in, Ororo,” she said, seated on the four poster bed, facing the window.  Birds flew past, diving and dodging in and out of view.  The door opened; Ororo stepped inside, leaving the door open behind her.  
  
“I came to see if you were all right,” she said, still standing in front of the door.  The sun was low in the now cloudless sky, sending bright beams of light across the bedroom.  
  
“I’m fine,” said Joan, turning to face her.  “Thank you for coming to check on me.”  Ororo smiled, but Joan could feel her anxiety.  “Really, I am fine.  Mr. Rasputin is hardly the most frightening thing I’ve ever faced.”  
  
“I am right next door if you need anything,” Ororo said.  
  
“I know,” Joan said, smiling back at her.  
  
Ororo nodded.  “Of course,” she said, beginning to back out of the room.  Her hand rested on the doorknob as she suddenly stopped.  “May I ask you a question?”  Joan looked up from the floor and tilted her head quizzically.  
  
“Yes.”  


“What did you do to Peter?  When he let you go, he seemed different.”

Joan sighed softly, looking past Ororo into the hallway.  Behind her, she could see Logan trying and failing to unlock his room door.  “I tried to make him stop caring.  It didn’t work very well, but I wasn’t trying very hard, either.”  Ororo raised her eyebrows, assessing Joan with her icy blue eyes.  She shrugged and moved back on the bed, dangling her bare feet over the edge of the mattress.  


“I see.  Well, have a good night, Doctor,” said Ororo, and she closed the door.  Outside, Joan heard Logan successfully open his room door and shut it a little too hard behind him.  She felt Ororo moving into the room next door, and lay back on her bed, closing her eyes in the dusky sunlight.

______________________________________________________________________________  


“That’s all for today, Jason.  Your control has improved immensely since we started our sessions.”  Jason opened his eyes and blinked back the bright sunlight streaming through the windows behind Joan’s desk.  
  
“When will the block be removed?” he said expressionlessly, hands at his sides.  Joan looked at him, then at her desk, resting both hands on its rich, dark wood.  
  
“When I can be sure you won’t hurt anyone,” she said, returning her gaze to his eyes.  “I have to be sure, Jason.  You know I do.”  
  
“But what if I’m sure?”  He stood from one of the mismatched chairs Joan had gathered from unused rooms in the Institute.  “What if I know I’m ready?”  Even though his emotions were locked behind Xavier’s mental wall, Joan swore she could feel frustrated tension mounting in the room.  Calmly, she stepped from behind her desk placing both hands on Jason’s shoulders.  
  
“Let me talk to Professor Xavier and see if I can’t get you in downstairs.”  It was well known by all the students that the basement hallways and rooms of the Institute were home to the training rooms of their teachers.  One such room was made of a metal that blocked outgoing mental transmissions from telepaths, telekenetics, and other mutants.  She knew Jason would have smiled if he was capable of it.  Instead, he merely raised his eyebrows, an expression that seemed more practiced than genuine.  
  
“Thank you,” he said in a similar monotone voice to the one Joan adopted when blocking all of her emotional radiation.  
  
“You’ve earned it, Jason.  Now, get to work on your homework.  I don’t want to hear from Professor Munroe about you falling behind again.”  He nodded, picked up his backpack, and hurried out of the office.  Exhausted, Joan sat on the edge of her desk, pushing loose strands of hair back up into her ponytail.  The light was beginning to fade outside as the sun crept ever closer to the horizon.  Joan checked her watch; 6:30.  Her stomach rumbled almost as soon as she formed the word ‘dinner’ in her mind.  It had been five days since her first session with Jason, and he was making great progress, considering the only times he could practice were when he met with Joan for their daily appointment.  There were a number of other children she’d had to work into a regular schedule, namely Jean and Marie, two girls whose powers made it inordinately difficult to get along day to day.  
  
As she made her way down the hall toward the dining area, Joan felt someone walking behind her, someone unfamiliar.  She turned around, but saw no one there.  Frowning, she stopped in the middle of the hallway and faced the presence.  
  
“Come on out, I know you’re there.”  No one appeared, and Joan could feel them moving further away from her.  “This isn’t amusing.  Show yourself.”  Nothing happened.  
  
“Talkin’ to yourself?”  Joan whirled, eyes wide and hands held at shoulder level like claws, to see Logan a little ways down the hallway behind her.  He laughed, shaking his head at her.  “Didn’t mean to scare ya.”  
  
Blinking, Joan lowered her hands, chalking up Logan sneaking up on her to being so focused on the invisible person somewhere in the mansion.  She could feel their presence growing fainter as they ran.  
  
“I felt someone here,” she said, “Someone who doesn’t belong.”  He smirked.  
  
“Sure ya did.  Been drinkin’, Doc?  Come on, there might still be some grub left.”  Without another word, he turned back down the hall toward the kitchen.  Joan shifted her attention back to the empty air around her, but it was no use.  The presence had gone, escaped somewhere out into the grounds.  She jogged to catch up with Logan.  
  
“I did feel someone, Logan,” she said, rubbing her temple anxiously.  
  
“I didn’t smell no one, Doc.  Besides, we got kids who can turn invisible and walk through walls.  What makes you think it wasn’t one of them playin’ a game?”  They turned the corner, passing the dining room altogether and heading straight for the kitchen.  Joan heard the clink of metal knives and forks on porcelain plates and felt a rush of emotion from all the students enjoying their dinner together.  She could pick out each and every one of them individually, and none of them matched the presence she felt just minutes ago.  
  
“It wasn’t one of the kids.  I would know, they all have unique emotional signatures.”  She felt Logan’s energy shift from casual curiosity mingled with skepticism to concern as they entered the kitchen.  It was empty of people, and Logan made straight for the refrigerator, pulling out plastic containers of leftover food until he found something he wanted.  He grabbed two bottles of root beer and twisted the tops off, holding on out to Joan.  “Thank you,” she said, taking it but not drinking.  Logan eyed her for a moment before rummaging in the silverware drawer for a fork.  
  
Outside in the hall, conversation erupted as the children left the dining room.  A few of them waved to Joan and Logan as they passed the kitchen, off to play basketball on the small court outside or do their homework by the fountains.  Joan sighed, feeling their anxiety and excitement as they went, and set the root beer down on the counter.  She opened the refrigerator for herself, examining its contents while Logan ate behind her, but stopped when she felt someone standing in the doorway curiously.  
  
“We missed you at dinner,” said a deep male voice.  Joan peered around the refrigerator door to see Hank leaning against the wall, arms crossed.  Logan shrugged and continued to eat.  
  
“I never go to dinner,” she said blankly, returning to the fridge.  
  
“Ah, yes, well, we still missed you.”  She felt his minor disappointment and heard him walk further into the kitchen, cleaning up the kitchen tools.  “There might still be some food in the dining room.  I can check the hot plates if you’d like.”  Joan shut the refrigerator door.  
  
“I can do it myself, but thank you,” she said, smiling without feeling.  Hank smiled back, adjusting his glasses on his hairy blue face.  
  
“Always happy to help,” he said and returned to cleaning.  Logan set his plastic container down, now emptied, and followed Joan out to the dining room.  
The dining room was longer than it was wide, displaying three long, dark wood tables set end to end lined with red-cushioned chairs.  The tablecloth draped over each table was a rich gold with stark white borders and each looked as though it had never seen a drop of food in its life.  The centerpiece of each table was a tall, golden candelabra fitted with five unlit tapered white candles, surrounded by seasonal flora.  Along the far wall of the room was a long buffet table set with gleaming metal hot plates.  Logan sniffed the air as he walked toward them, still following Joan.  
  
Most of the hot plates were empty, but Joan found a few with some fresh food still left.  She took a plate off the stack at the end of the table and handed it back to Logan, then took one for herself, scooping steaming mashed sweet potatoes onto it.  After the two had emptied the hot plates, they sat across from one another at the end of the nearest table.  
  
“You gonna tell Xavier about what you felt?” Logan asked between chewing and shoveling more food in his mouth.  
  
“Of course,” said Joan, absentmindedly poking her potatoes.  “We all ought to be on high alert if there’s someone sneaking around the school.”  
  
“Could just be a kid whose parents wouldn’t let ‘em come to the school.”  
  
“No, they weren’t afraid or curious.  Just determined, and disappointed when I called them out,” she said.  “They don’t want to be found, not even a bit.”  She sliced off a piece of roast beef and chewed it slowly, thinking.  Logan narrowed his eyes and pointed his fork at Joan.  
  
“So there’s some punk walking around invisible in the school and you didn’t stop ‘em?”  While she didn’t feel suspicion swirling in the soup that was Logan’s emotional radiation, Joan wasn’t going to allow it to foster.  She calmly set down her utensils and folded her hands on the table in front of her, raising her eyes slowly to meet his.  
  
“The kind of thing I do to people is not the same as putting them in a headlock, Logan,” she said quietly, staring into his dark blue eyes.  “If I were to use my power to stop them, they may not be able to tell us why they are here.  Besides, they moved too far out of my range when you startled me.”  His face relaxed, as did his mood.  
  
“Don’t have to be so dramatic,” he grumbled, returning to his nearly empty plate.  They sat in silence for a while, finishing off the leftover food.  Logan finished first, alternating between watching Joan and looking out the window at the nearly dark backyard.  The students who had gone outside were coming back in, and the back door clacked open down the hall as they passed through, chatting and laughing.  Joan could feel Logan growing tense and uncertain when, finally, he cleared his throat.  “So how’s things with the kids?”

It was an awkward question; Joan could tell Logan wasn’t good at small talk, but admittedly, neither was she.

“Things are going well, although I can’t tell you details.”  
  
“Yeah, doctor-patient whatever.  Think they’ll be ready for the congressmen?”  
  
Joan set her fork down, finished with her meal.  “Not if Xavier intends for them to demonstrate their abilities.  But I think they’ll be fine if all our visitors will be doing is peeking inside classrooms on a tour.”  They sat in uncomfortable silence until Joan rose to take her plate into the kitchen.  Logan followed her out into the hallway, then stopped, tilting his head to one side.  Joan stopped too, feeling some kind of distress nearby.  It only took a few seconds for her to realize it was Jean and a few more to set her plate on the ground and start running.  
  
They ran through the halls toward what was now the sound of Jean screaming and found her surrounded by other students in the middle of the main common room.  
“Jean!  Jean, get up, Jean!”  Joan heard Rogue in the middle of them, shouting through her tears.  The fear in the room was palpable.  
  
“Get out of the way!” she shouted, pushing the children aside to get to Jean, who was flailing on the ground, clawing at herself.  
  
“They touched me, they touched me, I felt them in my skin!” screamed Jean, drawing her own blood with her fingernails as she raked them down her arm.  “Get them out!  GET THEM OUT!”  Joan grabbed one of her wrists, immediately closing her eyes and locking into Jean’s erratic emotional pattern.  It was as if her mind was on red alert, trying to expel something that was not there; Joan followed her panic to a memory of earlier that evening, maybe ten minutes before the incident.  She watched through Jean’s eyes as she talked with Rogue and Scott Summers.  They were laughing, sitting at the fountain outside, when suddenly Jean’s vision went dark.  Joan felt something strange, something different than just a blackout, something foreign.  
  
As she reached out to the feeling, Jean let out a bloodcurdling scream and Joan was flung backward into the hard, wood wall of the common room.  All of the students were knocked back as well, slamming into the walls or skidding across the floor, furniture scattered with them.  Blinking back stars, Joan crawled forward to Jean and sat over her, holding her wrists down, reentering her mind and focusing instead on siphoning off the panic.  She felt the indescribable heat of someone else’s emotions flowing into her and immediately began to wall it off in her mind, creating a space for it among the banked emotions of others.  Jean’s screaming died to a whimper as tears streamed down her face.  When Joan was sure the panic was gone, she let go, sitting next to Jean on the floor, panting.  She breathed slowly, gathering her own feelings within her to keep Jean’s panic from leaking out, and assessed the damage.  
  
Some of the students were crying, others were unconscious, and some were simply shocked silent.  Logan had picked himself up off the floor and was shouting for help; Joan could already feel Xavier making his way to the scene, along with the rest of the staff.  As she looked around, she noticed Jason, sitting upright and straight-faced on the floor near a shattered window.  He seemed unhurt, save for a small cut over his right eyebrow, and when they made eye contact, he nodded.  Joan returned his nod with a smile and thumbs up.  
  
“What the hell happened?” said Emma, staring down at Joan.  Ororo pushed past her, knelt down, and lifted Jean carefully into her arms.  Peter and Logan were checking the pulses of unconscious students, and Hank was helping conscious ones to their feet.  Joan watched Scott help Jason up, and the two of them set to work lifting unconscious students onto the stretchers Xavier had brought in, floating in front of him.  
  
“Shut up and help, Emma,” snapped Ororo, wiping Jean’s tears away.  Grumbling, Emma set about righting furniture, shooting Joan suspicious glances.  A sudden hand on Joan’s shoulder caused her to jump, and she looked up into Logan’s face.  
  
“Come on, kiddo, let’s get you up,” he said, moving his thick hand to her back.  She folded her legs underneath her and stood, stumbling a little as she straightened.  Logan steadied her, helping her settle into a chair that Emma had just placed upright.  Xavier came around the chair, demeanor oddly calm for the chaos happening around him.  
  
“Doctor, can you explain what happened here?” he said quietly, looking at nothing but Joan.  She blinked, regulating her breathing.  
  
“Logan and I heard Jean screaming, so we ran here.  I took her panic from her, but not before she lashed out.”  It was the simplest explanation, and Joan could see nothing wrong with it.  Xavier nodded, apparently satisfied with her answer, and left to guide the stretchers to the infirmary.  Hank went with them, the closest thing the school had to a medical doctor.  
  
The remaining students were sent along behind them, all of them shaken, except for Jason.  He lingered for a moment, his arm outstretched to Joan, then followed Scott and Rogue down the hall.  
  
“That was some pretty spooky voodoo you did back there, Doc,” said Logan, leaning on the arm of her chair.  “Are you gonna be okay?”  Ororo was still holding a quietly sobbing Jean on the floor, watching Joan over the girl’s red-haired head.  
  
“ _I_ will be fine,” she said, sinking off the chair onto the floor toward Jean.  Ororo unwrapped herself from Jean’s embrace to allow the girl to go to Joan.  She laid her head in Joan’s lap, sniffing loudly, smearing her black eyeliner with the back of her hand.  Emma, finished redecorating the room, stood over them, hands on her hips.  
  
“What did you do?” she said, glaring at Joan.  Peter eyed the scene, leaning on the far wall next to the broken glass door.  Ororo stood, placing herself between the two women on the floor and Emma.  
  
“Back off, Emma,” she said, raising a hand to her chest.  “It would have been a lot worse without her here.”  
  
“It might not have happened at all if she weren’t here,” said Emma, glaring past Ororo at Joan.  “What did you do to Jean?”  
  
“She didn’t do anything to me!” yelled Jean, sitting up, red-eyed and exhausted.  “She helped me!”  
  
Logan stepped around the chair to Emma’s other side, arms crossed.  “We came in here when she,” he pointed at Jean, “was on the floor, screamin’.  She woulda torn her own arms off if Joan hadn’t stopped her.”  Joan looked at her hands when he said that, noticing streaks of Jean’s blood dried on her palms.  Jean’s arms looked worse; deep scratches ran down them, torn skin flaking off onto the floor.  
  
Emma’s lip curled upward as she directed her glare to Logan.  “We’ll see if that’s true.”  She put her fingers to her temples, still staring at Logan.  Raising an eyebrow, he looked at Joan, then Ororo, who shrugged.  For a few moments, they sat in silence, waiting for something to happen, when finally Emma exhaled, dropping her hands to her sides.  
  
“Convenient, both the newbies’ minds are inaccessible,” she said, hands clenching into fists.  Off in the corner, Peter scoffed.  
  
“Maybe it’s a sign, princess,” said Logan, “that you should stay out of people’s heads.”  He knelt down to Joan, putting his hand on her shoulder.  “I think we better go talk to Xavier.”  Jean clutched Joan’s sleeves, shaking her head.  
  
“Don’t leave me,” she whimpered.  
  
“Come on, then,” said Joan, helping her up.  “We’ll all three go together.”  Simultaneously, the two women stood and followed Logan down the hall, Ororo jogging ahead of them.  Peter stalked after them, leaving Emma alone with her thoughts in the damaged common room. 

______________________________________________________________________________

Most of the uninjured students had cleared out by the time Joan, Logan, Jean, and Ororo reached the infirmary, but there were still several students on beds.  All of them were awake, stretching their limbs and chatting.  Xavier was waiting for them in a far corner, seated behind a dusty desk stacked high with medical equipment.  Off in the opposite corner, Hank was quietly arguing with Scott Summers.  
  
“I have this under control, Scott.  You don’t have to worry.”  
  
“I can help, Professor, just let me help,” said Scott, eyebrows disappearing behind his red-tinted sunglasses.  Behind him, Jason was helping a thin, tanned girl with long, straight blond hair sit up, her wrist wrapped in gauze.  Jean buried her face in Joan’s collar when she saw the others, and Joan was nearly overwhelmed by her guilt.  She stroked Jean’s hair, guiding her toward Xavier, Logan following close behind.  
  
Joan and Jean took the chairs in front of the desk while Logan hovered behind them.  Xavier leaned forward, still calm, and smiled at Jean.  
  
“Jean, can you tell me what happened?”  Jean looked at the ground, then at Joan, then finally at Xavier.  
  
“I . . . I was talking to Rogue, I mean, Marie, and Scott, and we were outside when I felt this . . . thing smothering me, in my mind, like if you put a plastic bag over your head, you can’t breathe?  And I couldn’t fight it off, it took me over, and I blacked out.  I don’t remember what happened until we were inside, in the common room, and it just left.  It felt like I could breathe again.  I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, I didn’t . . . .”  Tears rolled down her face, dripping off her chin onto her jeans.  “I got scared, I don’t know what happened, I was just scared.  I’m sorry.”  
  
“It’s all right, Jean, no one is blaming you for anything,” said Xavier, eyes ever kind.  “You aren’t in trouble.  Go and see Professor McCoy about your arms.”  She nodded and stood, touching Joan’s shoulder briefly before hurrying over to Hank and Scott.  When she reached them, Scott threw his arms around her, and she sobbed into his neck, turning the collar of his bright red shirt a dark wine color.  
  
Facing Xavier, Joan leaned over the desk toward him, speaking in hushed tones.  “Before dinner, I thought I felt someone invisible wandering the halls.  I planned to come to you, but then this,” she gestured toward the room at large, “happened, and I obviously could not.”  Xavier nodded, face no longer warm and kind, but grim.  He set his hands on the table, steepling his fingers, staring at the desk’s surface for a long while.  Joan could feel him weighing responses, shifting from polite anger to strategical calm.  
  
Finally, he chose one.  “I’m afraid I’ll have to institute some . . . uncomfortable measures now that I have this information.  If someone incorporeal is wandering the school, I have no choice but to lock down the estate.”  His eyes flickered over the room.  “Gather the other staff and meet me in my office.”  Swiftly, he floated from the infirmary, his expression softening as he passed his students.  
  
“Think he already knew?” said Logan, watching him leave.  
  
“I think he suspected, but incorporeal could mean a whole host of things for telepaths that it doesn’t mean for someone like me.  There might not be brain patterns to latch onto, whereas emotions are emitted regardless of physical existence.  If ghosts were real, I assume I could tell how they felt, as well,” said Joan, eyes glazing over as she stared at the wall behind the desk.  Logan huffed, pulling a half-burnt cigar butt out of his pocket and chewing it.  
  
“Let’s get goin’, then,” he said.  Joan heard him walking away from her but couldn’t bring herself to follow.  Everything was swimming; the dark wood panels swirled with the dusty silver medical apparati clogging the desk’s surface, she could feel the panic she had siphoned from Jean rising from storage, slithering through her mental pathways and sticking to them, filling her mind with its complexities.  No emotion was ever pure, and this one was no different.  Like a new, spring branch lined with buds, the panic sprouted, leading Joan down tunnels of confusion, helplessness, frustration, anger, and fear, all curling back to their origin, feeding into each other and strengthening their source.  Joan examined each feeling, trying to see if she had pulled any memories with it, any connection to the attacker, but in the end, there was nothing.  What she had taken from Jean was raw emotion, unlike the carefully gleaned pain of soldiers traumatized by war, connected to their triggering events that were stored away in the dark recesses of her mind, locked behind ever-strengthening walls of dissociation.  
  
Fingers snapped in front of her face, jarring Joan out of her exploration.  
  
“Hey, Doc,” he said, waving his hand across her field of vision, “You all right in there?”  In response, she removed her glasses and shook her head vigorously, getting quickly to her feet.  “Okay then,” he said, raising an eyebrow.  “Let’s get movin’, the Professor’s waitin’ on us.”  Leaving her at the desk, Logan left the infirmary, ignoring Hank and Ororo’s stares and nearly running Emma over as she and Peter entered the room.  
  
“Illyana!” shouted Peter, taking two swift strides to the thin, blond girl next to Jason.  He gathered her in his trunk-like arms, and she patted his back awkwardly.  
  
“I’m okay, just a sprained wrist,” she said, her accent barely detectable.  Emma’s gaze rested briefly on their reunion before turning to Joan.  She beelined for her, nearly tripping over the corner of a bed in her haste.  She opened her mouth to speak, then sighed and closed it, gathering herself.  Joan watched her, taking in the internal conflict between fury and reason waging before her.  After a moment, Emma straightened, clenching and unclenching her fists.  
  
“Obviously, Professor Xavier trusts you, or you wouldn’t be standing here right now,” said Emma.  She paused again, inhaling deeply and exhaling through her nose, then started to speak.  “But the rest of us--”  
  
Joan cut her off, knowing what was coming next.  “The Professor wants us all to meet him in his office.  There is an intruder in the school, invisible and barely detectable, but we know they are here.  He is going to make an announcement and he wants us all there for it.”  Emma stared, mouth still open, confused.  Joan continued, feeding off Emma’s broken hostility.  “If you are going to tell me how you don’t trust me and how I have to earn it or whatever, you can save it, Ms. Frost.  I don’t care what you think of me or my ability, all I am here to do is help these children deal with their powers and function like regular human beings.  You do your business, I will do mine, but I will not tolerate being lectured like a child every day that I work here because you can’t read my mind with ease.”

Emma closed her mouth slowly, narrowing her eyes at Joan, then nodded, the tension she had brought to their conversation dissipating.  A small smirk played over her well glossed lips.  
  
“You’re tough, Doctor, I’ll give you that,” she said.  With one last once-over of Joan, Emma pivoted on her heel and left the infirmary.  Ororo gave Joan a quizzical look from her seat on the edge of a bed near the door.  Standing next to her was a girl with bubblegum pink skin and large, iridescent wings growing out of her shoulder blades.  She looked unhurt, although Joan had seen her unconscious in the common room.

Quickly, Joan informed both Ororo and Hank about the Xavier’s request, then exited the room, headed to his office.  The halls were empty, but she could feel the buzz of students in nearby rooms recounting the events to their friends.  Joan did her best to block them out, still weakened from Jean’s unfiltered panic broiling behind its mental wall; it was one reason she hadn’t worked with teenagers over the course of her career.  They tended to feel things more strongly, without boundaries, than adults who had learned to curb their emotions into more socially acceptable outlets.  Compounded by supernatural mutations and constant bombardment to conform to more “human” ways of living, these teens were powder kegs, not an assignment Joan would have picked for herself, much less after the rollercoaster the last two years of her life had been.  
  
Xavier’s office door was slightly ajar, and Joan could feel Logan and Emma waiting inside, a quiet tension building between them.  She entered the room, and the feeling broke like a wave on a rocky shore.  
  
“Ms. Munroe, Doctor McCoy, and Mr. Rasputin should be along shortly,” said Joan, taking one of the empty chairs in front of Xavier’s desk.  Xavier nodded, but did not make eye contact, staring instead at the doorway.  Joan felt his uncertainty swirling uncharacteristically around him, twitching like a cat’s tail before it strikes.  
  
The rest of the staff entered the office, fanning out in a half circle behind the chairs.  As Peter closed the door behind him, Xavier looked up, still unblinking, and rest his hands together on the desk.  
  
“There is a situation unfolding at this school,” said Xavier gravely, looking around at all of them.  “We have a mutant intruder, someone who can make themselves invisible and has the ability to possess the minds of whomever they choose.  The only way to tell is after someone has been possessed, as we saw with Jean today.”  
  
Ororo tilted her head slightly, brow furrowed.  “How do we have so much information already if this thing has only been discovered today?”  
  
“These are the facts we have, Ms. Munroe,” he said. “I have merely compiled them into a list of characteristics.  At this very moment, I can sense them in the school, but I cannot pinpoint their location or uncover their motives.”

“I thought I felt something weird,” said Emma, running a hand through her long hair.  “But I thought maybe it had to do with her.”  She pointed casually at Joan, who shook her head.  
  
“I felt it earlier today, before it attacked Jean.  It got away from me before I could stop it,” said Joan, stowing her feelings of guilt.  Peter huffed, crossing his arms and leaning on the doorframe.  
  
“Are we going to ignore that these problems started when we welcomed these two,” he gestured to Logan and Joan, “into the school?  How do we know this thing didn’t come in with one of them?”  
  
Logan growled, hands forming into fists.  “Are you lookin’ for a fight, punk?  ‘Cause you keep tryin’a pick ‘em, and I’m inclined to let you have one.”  The slick sound of sliding metal accompanied by the soft snickt of tearing skin revealed three long blades growing from each of Logan’s fists.  Peter’s skin shifted suddenly to its steel form.  Both men turned toward each other, fists rising.  
  
“That’s enough,” barked Xavier.  “Mr. Rasputin, if you do not trust my choices, you are free to leave, but I have hired Logan and Dr. Bates and that is final.  And Logan,” he turned his chair toward him, “I know your life may have been hard outside these walls, but in here, we do not raise our fists to our fellows.  Is that clear?”  
  
“Crystal,” Logan grumbled, sheathing his claws back in his arms.  Peter stepped back slightly, but did not return his skin to its original state.  Joan did not feel the animosity fade; it hung in the air, darting between the two men like a school of agitated fish.  
  
“As of this evening, I am locking down the school.  No visitors, no field trips, no one in or out.  Classes will continue as usual, but each student will be under a strict schedule.  Anything out of the ordinary, and myself, Ms. Frost, or Dr. Bates must be notified to examine the student.  Each student will be incorporated into a regular check with myself, Ms. Frost, or Dr. Bates.  I will make the announcement in half an hour; by then, I expect all students to be returned to their rooms.  Any suspicious activity should be reported to me immediately.  Are these instructions clear?”  Everyone nodded.  
  
“What about the congressmen’s visit?” asked Dr. McCoy.  
  
“If the culprit is not caught by then, I will have to cancel it,” said Xavier.  “I can’t take the chance of one of them becoming possessed.  It would hurt mutant interests more if this sort of thing got out to the public than if I cancel a hastily scheduled tour of the school.  Are there any more questions?”  No one spoke.  “Good, then I would like you all to make sure the students are in their rooms by the time I make the announcement.”  
  
The sun was nearly set, sending the unlit hallways of the school into shadow.  The remaining students in the infirmary were retrieved and escorted to their rooms, Ororo reassuring them that no one was in any trouble, this was just for their own safety.  The dormitory hallway was dotted with small groups of students discussing the incident; they were broken up quickly, dispersing to their assigned rooms.  
  
Xavier’s announcement came on schedule, his voice ringing through the minds of each and every mutant in the school.  
  
“Attention students.  Tonight’s incident has brought to light a serious issue happening in the halls of our Institute.  As we have come to discover, there is an intruder in our school, one who can make themselves invisible and has demonstrated powers of possession.  Until today, we were unaware of such a presence, but it was made clear by the attack on Miss Grey, one that has affected many students.  As a result, I am ordering certain measures be taken to ensure the safety of our students and staff.  
  
“Firstly, students will be subject to a new, stricter schedule, one that will allow us to account for everyone’s whereabouts easily and without intrusion into your privacy.  No excursions off-grounds will be allowed, including the planned Museum of Natural History trip.”  Groans and sighs were audible in the dormitory hallway, and Joan felt the collective pang of disappointment from the student body.  “Secondly, we are instituting a strict after-dinner curfew beginning at seven o’clock and ending at seven in the morning.  This means students are expected to go straight from dinner to their rooms, no common rooms, no library, and certainly no outdoor activity.”  Shouts of indignation rang out from several rooms, and Joan could hear one girl complain loudly about not being able to study in the library.  “Thirdly, every student will be required to meet daily with either myself, Professor Frost, or Dr. Bates to be sure no one is possessed.  You will be issued new schedules in your homeroom, and it is _mandatory_  to turn up for your appointments.  Finally, the staff and I implore you to report any suspicious activity you see or hear to one of us immediately.  Many of you are equipped with extrasensory abilities; you are encouraged to use them.  This intruder can move around outside of a host, so it is possible to encounter them before they attack.  Remember, we are taking these measures to ensure your safety, not to make your lives miserable.  Please be vigilant, please be respectful, and please continue with your studies, however distracting this event may be.  Good night, everyone.”  
  
Joan left the students’ hallway for the staff one, heels clacking along the wooden floor in time with Logan’s booted footfalls.  They stopped outside her room, and Logan watched Peter pass them through narrowed eyes.  The massive Russian man did not look at them, but Joan noted he was still made of steel instead of flesh.  Ororo joined them, waving goodnight to Hank who smiled weakly, exhausted from tending to so many students in the infirmary.  Emma stopped for a moment, fidgeting with her blouse’s buttons.  
  
“Good work today, Doctor,” she said, her eyes flitting from Ororo to Logan then to Joan.  “But you really should clean up that melon.  It’s like a twelve-year-old boy’s room in there.”  Joan offered her a small smile.  
  
“I’ll try to make it easier for you to poke around in my darkest secrets,” she said, pulling her key out of her pocket.  “Good night, Ms. Frost.”  
  
“Yeah, sweet dreams,” said Emma, leaving their little group for her own room down the hall across from Peter’s.  
  
Logan shook his head.  “She’s a weird one.  First, she’s jumpin’ down your throat for no good reason, now she wants to be besties or somethin’.”  
  
“Besties?”  Ororo’s eyebrows threatened to disappear into her thick, white hair.  “Have you been watching Gossip Girl lately, Logan?”  Joan hid her laughter behind the back of her hand, but she felt the mirth slip out of her skin and into the air around them.  Logan frowned at her, suddenly sullen, and crossed his arms.  
  
“Whatever.  I still say Frost is a strange bird.”  He turned to Joan, who snapped back into an emotionless state, lowering her hand to her side.  “I dunno what Xavier wants you to do if you catch the bastard, but be careful mucking around in those kids’ heads.”  
  
“I will,” she said, voice monotone.  “Thank you.”  Ororo and Joan watched Logan walk across the hall and fumble at his lock, finally opening it after a mumbled tirade of cursing.  After his door closed, Ororo turned to Joan, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“He is right.  You should be careful.  Who knows what it is capable of when pushed into a corner?”  Joan could feel concern radiating from Ororo, a strong, caring concern in stark contrast to Logan’s muffled, dutiful concern.  Allowing herself a smile, Joan placed her hand over Ororo’s, giving the woman some reassurance.  
  
“I will be fine, but I appreciate your words.”  She squeezed Ororo’s hand gently, then let go, moving to unlock her door.  Ororo’s hand slipped from her shoulder, falling to her side.  
  
“Good night, Doctor,” she said.  
  
“Good night,” Joan replied, opening the door and leaving Ororo in the hall behind her.

***

Emma Frost stood perfectly still in front of the closed door to her room.  The room remained dark; she did not move to turn on the light.  Her eyes were glazed, her breathing slow and rhythmic.  Suddenly, something translucent moved forward through her skin, stepping out into the room in front of her.  She gasped, falling to her knees, face animated with fear and confusion.  The figure looked over its shoulder at her, solidifying into a man wearing what looked like the clothes of a special operative agent.  His attire was black, some of it obviously armored, and he wore a black cap over his head.  While Emma convulsed on the floor, he walked through her room, picking up objects and turning them over in his hands.  
  
“Who . . . are . . . you . . . ?” choked Emma, trying to lift herself to her feet.  The man turned to face her, and she could see a giant X emblazoned across his chest.  He did not answer, merely watched her scrabble on the floorboards.  When she was finally still, his body shifted into an incorporeal state, and, ghost-like, he floated through the wall of her room into now empty hallway.

**Author's Note:**

> All properties belong to their respective copyright holders, excepting Jason Richfield and Dr. Joan Bates.


End file.
